Consisting only of three chapters excluding the introduction and conclusion, the slim book offers rewarding insights on the changes in the mentality of Spanish authors that Ran Tene has examined, reflecting the milieu in which these authors were embedded in. Tene calls these changes as happening in the “ethical worldviews” of these missionaries who having come from Spain interpreted Indian society bringing with them all the temporal and societal factors that they have had lived with. Tene focuses on two authors, Fr. Toribio de Benavente-Motolinía (1490-1565) and Fr. Juan de Torquemada (1562-1624), both Franciscans, having lived seventy years apart or almost three generations of gap although he consulted four other authors whom Torquemada had used as sources.
The shift in the ethical praxis between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by these Spanish missionaries was successfully brought into light by Tene by selecting some textual passages from Motolinía and other authors and compared them with the way Torquemada presented them, noting the changes in the text as well as the incorporation of new ideas that depart from the textuality where Motolinía had come from. In the first chapter, Tene lays the basis of his arguments that the sixteenth-century ethical world of Motolinía changed from the sight model to the model of touch in the seventeenth-century ethical world of Torquemada. Conversion and healing in the former was explained in the manner of sight, beholding a cross from afar while in the latter it was through touching the cross, its bodily presence to the believer. In the latter, the material and the concrete were eschewed upon; in the former there was emphasis on corporeality. While Motolinía and his contemporaries valued poverty and advocated self-denial, Torquemada appeared to have supported the idea of property and ownership, identity and free will of individuals.
In the second chapter, Tene deals with the ethical story involved in the two contrasting textualities between Motolinía and Torquemada. The writer in Motolinía wanted his name to be anonymous while the writer in Torquemada liked his name to be known as to leave a mark in the world. Motolinía approached his story as an example to be followed on one hand; Torquemada engaged his ethical hero as someone unique with his own individuality on the other. In the manner of storytelling, Motolinía preferred distance between the author and his reader, which is a full contrast to Torquemada’s attempt to close the space between the two as close as possible. Tene found the crucial difference in historical treatment between the two for while Motolinía did not regard stories as historical heritage or the making of a national identity, Torquemada placed importance on the family, the land as “patria” and the interplay between personal and national history. Although this book does not squarely tackle the growth of nationalism, could it be that Torquemada, who was ten years old when he arrived in Mexico and educated in his new homeland, ushered in his work the early beginnings of Mexican nationalism?
Finally, in the third chapter, Tene discusses cruelty and how sixteenth-century writers and Torquemada dealt with it by highlighting the salient differences between the two periods, which relate to the same ethical transition he observed. In sixteenth-century missionary texts cruelty was a public spectacle to create fear and instil in the viewers a lesson. Justice as cruel punishment should be seen no matter violent as crime deterrent and as something that purifies. In Torquemada, cruelty was not physical but psychological and the suffering was emotional rather than physical. The tension between the religious and the familial was now replaced by the conflict between the familial and the self. Objective justice in which the law does not exempt the family of the ruler was reinforced although it intruded and conflicted with privacy, which a human being is entitled to. Thus, while the former regards law or justice as equal, the latter signifies the importance of justice in relation to ownership.
What was the ethical transformation that these two textualities have raised? Tene sees in Motolinía and other sixteenth-century authors passive worldviews in which the missionary as the ethical teacher showed and instructed without the necessary involvement. In the case of Torquemada, he notices an image of a man, propertied and accustomed to new relations, including a personal and direct contact with a religious teacher.
The ultimate question that immediately arises: apart from Torquemada, were there other missionaries whose writings confirm, deny, or indicate other changes to this ethical transition? The heavy reliance on Torquemada in order to prove the author’s argument seems to cast a little doubt on its validity. Nonetheless, Tene’s efforts to utilize cross-disciplinary methods from philosophy, history and literary studies are laudable although I find the philosophical discussions on Iris Murdoch and others rather forced.
As in all books, minor typographical mistakes such as “lightening” instead of “lightning” (23, 24), mistranslations for “Nuestra Señora de Remedios” as “Our Lady of Healing” (24) and “Our Lady of Medicine” (27) instead of “Our Lady of Remedies”, “Phelen” instead of “Phelan” (92) are observed as well as semantic errors like “reward” (24) instead of “punishment” or the use of “of” in Spanish surnames instead of “de” (61), “unconceivable” (88) instead of inconceivable. Good editing could have prevented the proliferation of other stylistic errors.
For those who are looking for indigenous responses to European expansion, this book is not for you although it is part of the series devoted to such. Conversely, those who are interested in exegetical studies over time, this is definitely a good read.
